


new skin, old skin

by ncfan



Category: Samurai Jack (Cartoon)
Genre: Bathing/Washing, Gen, References to Abuse, References to Burning, transformations
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-28
Updated: 2017-04-28
Packaged: 2018-10-25 03:42:36
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 656
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10756017
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ncfan/pseuds/ncfan
Summary: "There was pain at first… No, there was pain all through it, unabated until several hours after she was finally finished. It was not the clean, stinging pain of ripping a scab off a mostly-healed wound, nothing so merciful as that. This pain was slow and lingering, burning and aching—when the rock she used cut too deep, the abrasions added their own twinging, oozing pain to the mix."Ashi cleans the soot off of herself.





	new skin, old skin

**Author's Note:**

> [CN/TW: references to abuse, burning]

There was pain at first… No, there was pain all through it, unabated until several hours after she was finally finished. It was not the clean, stinging pain of ripping a scab off a mostly-healed wound, nothing so merciful as that. This pain was slow and lingering, burning and aching—when the rock she used cut too deep, the abrasions added their own twinging, oozing pain to the mix.

Pain there was, but Ashi could live with it, even if she gritted her teeth and curled her lips back at each fresh pang. The night-dark water was nearly as cold as the snow she had stalked the samurai through (a lifetime ago now, it felt like, when she was a different person), and that helped numb the pain a little. Besides, the pain of removing the ash and soot and crude, so long bonded to her skin, was nothing to the agony of its first application. Mother’s lessons had never gone unaccompanied by pain. Mother had told her, more than once, that pain was the only way she seemed capable of learning.

But that was years and years ago, a lifetime, or so it felt like. Ashi had been one of seven, had still every distracted moment paid for with pain. She had a purpose, then, and not once had doubt entered her mind.

_Where did he go? How could he have vanished so quickly, and why… why did he not…_

Ashi scrubbed at her fingers with the stone, wincing and as it rubbed painfully against her knuckles. It hit one hard, and she bit back a cry. For some reason, the most vivid thing in the world in that moment was the memory of Avi crying herself to sleep some hours after the first burning. She didn’t do it out in the open; the only evidence was a muffled sniffling that the other six had been in too much pain themselves to have any real reaction to. When they were roused from sleep, Avi’s face was dry, and—

Her heart was constricting, painfully.

Avi hadn’t gone to Mother for comfort. Mother had none to give, and had never pretended otherwise. Avi had not sought out any of her sisters, though they were still at an age when they occasionally crawled into each other’s pallets for warmth. She had hid her face from them.

It was as though a hard hand had reached into Ashi’s chest, trying to squeeze her heart until it burst. Her throat was hard and hot and taut, and she could not honestly say why. It was—

She was one, now. It was not worth dwelling on.

The moon shone down on the hollow where Ashi had taken refuge. Central to the pool of water was a pool of bright silver-white light, so much gentler than fire. Ashi held her arm up to the shaft of light, her lips pursing in a frown.

A child had been made to embrace Aku’s darkness, take it into herself, and had learned darkness through fire and pain. A child had questioned nothing, had never questioned the burning even as she screamed herself hoarse.

Ashi wasn’t a child anymore. She had seen the world, and found questions that her mother could not answer. She held her arm up to the moonlight, and looked.

Moonlight was not as clear a guide for sight as sunlight, but it served. Ashi could make out white ridges of scar tissue dotting the skin, here and there. Bare patches where hair didn’t grow, had likely never grown, and never would. Abrasions from where the stone had rubbed too harshly oozed dark little trickles of blood, dyed black by moonlight. Not a pretty sight, not really.

It was her skin, though. For the first time in years, Ashi could see her skin, really _see_ it. She looked at her skin for the first time in years, and smiled. She felt clean again.

**Author's Note:**

> Yeah, I know that if you want to be really realistic, scarring would certainly _not_ be the extent of the damage on Ashi’s body from the burning. But given that her mother was okay to get up and walk around without any apparent discomfort right after giving birth to _septuplets_ , realism has to a greater or lesser extent clearly been thrown out the window here.


End file.
